Scorpion Betrayal (9 page)

Scorpion told him the name of the hotel.

“Is he alive?”

“He's tied up and he'll have a filthy hangover and won't remember much, but otherwise he's unharmed.”

Al-Hafez offered the slip of paper. “Call off your men. If anyone else follows me, I'll kill them,” Scorpion said, putting the slip of paper in his pocket.

“It's in the al Mouhajarine district. Be warned. He's well protected,” al-Hafez said.

“So were you.”

“Extremely well protected.”

“I'll keep that in mind,” Scorpion said, leaving the BlackBerry on the desktop and getting up.

Al Hafez walked around and sat down behind his desk. Scorpion stuck the gun in his belt, pulled his shirt over it and headed for the door.

“By the way,” he said, pausing at the door. “What's Abadi a doctor of?”

“He's a medical doctor.”

“What's his specialty?”

“Infectious diseases. Why?”

“Just curious. Wait five minutes before you press the button under the desk, Najah,” Scorpion said. Something al-Hafez had said was setting off alarm bells in his head, but he wasn't sure what.

“I want you out of my country, Monsieur Leveque,” al-Hafez said, using Scorpion's cover identity, his eyes narrowing. “You have twenty-four hours. After that,
bi ‘idni allah,
you will never leave Syria. Not even as a corpse.”

T
he night goggles cast a greenish glow over the trees and the wall and the guardhouse outside the gated estate. Scorpion studied the layout from his rental car down the street. Dr. Abadi's compound was well protected, all right, he thought. In addition to the guardhouse by the gate and the razor wire atop the high concrete walls, he spotted a number of security cameras, wireless alarms, and motion detectors along the perimeter, and more no doubt were strategically located on the grounds and in the house. And he heard the barking of guard dogs from inside the walls.

He put the night goggles in his backpack. There wasn't any choice. He'd have to go in. The question was how. Al-Hafez had kept his word about the tails. He'd been free of them all day. He'd been given twenty-four hours because al-Hafez wanted to distance Syria and the GSD from whatever the Islamic Resistance was planning. As for him tackling Dr. Abadi's compound, for al-Hafez it was a no-lose situation. The Syrian GSD and Mukhabarat were tied to the traditional Hezbollah leadership. From al-Hafez's point of view, whether he killed Abadi or Abadi killed him, the director won.

Scorpion had spent the day making preparations. He'd rented a Renault Megane, a car they'd used to tail him, obviously popular with the GSD. At an Internet café, he'd posted what he learned from al-Hafez about the Islamic Resistance to the International Corn Association website. Enough to keep them scrambling and to keep Rabinowich happily digging through databases. In response to a cryptic coded post by Rabinowich, Scorpion indicated that so far as he could tell, al-Hafez was most likely telling the truth about no Syrian involvement in the Cairo bombing, but he would know more after tonight.

That afternoon, he had gone to a number of shops in Saida Zaynab, a slum district filled with refugees from Iraq where, for a price, you could buy anything or anyone. Later he'd mingled with the evening crowds in the lanes and shops blazing with light in the Souk al-Hamidiyeh, in the walled Old City next to the citadel, where he bought an inexpensive suit like the one his cover, Fawzi al-Diyala, would wear. He was prepared as he could be. If Abadi's men captured him and he had to get out, he was counting on the Houdini trick, the one that had enabled the magician to make his famous escapes. But there was no way to stop the dryness in his mouth or his heart rate from going up. He knew there was a good chance he'd end the night as a headless corpse floating in the Barada River.

He'd made his choice that afternoon. Basically, there were only two ways in.

He could sneak in, deal with the perimeter guards, and tranquilize the guard dogs with Diazepam. As for the alarms, a preliminary drive-by earlier in the day convinced him that for such a large compound, they were likely using wireless alarms. Trying to eliminate alarms individually meant getting to the alarms or the controller without setting off motion detectors and other sensors that were probably all over the place, and then required someone who knew what he was doing to disconnect them. The system was almost certainly multichannel, so that the instant you disconnected one, the other channel would set off the alarm. But all wireless devices were based on RF technology, and a better way would be to disable them all at the same time with an electromagnetic pulse. All that required was a powerful enough transmitter—say a 2.4 GHz transmitter with a miniparabolic dish—and something to create an electromagnetic interference wave. An iPod playing Bruce Springsteen would do.

But the problem with breaking in was you never knew what you would run into. Sooner or later there would be a confrontation with other guards, and gunfire and police to deal with. And all that so at best he could briefly interrogate Abadi under pressure where the value of information from torture was always suspect. Anything you got from such interrogations was always a mixture of lies and half-truths, and that's if you had time, and he had none.

The second way in was to make an appointment and try to talk himself in. As with what he had done with Kassem in Beirut, the real intelligence would come not from what was said, but how Abadi reacted afterward. Except they were not stupid, and his cover was thin, and if they started to question his cover, he might be the one screaming in a dark cellar trying to think of lies and half-truths they'd believe. From somewhere, a dog barked just once, and he realized his heart was pounding.

A car came down the street, its headlights carving the only light in the darkness except for a dim red glow from the interior of the guardhouse. As it passed, Scorpion started his rental car and drove it to the gate. A guard in olive-drab fatigues stepped out of the guardhouse. At the same instant, a second guard appeared on the other side of the car with a Chinese Type 95 assault rifle pointed at him. It looked brand new and very lethal.

“I have an appointment with Abu Faraj,” Scorpion said in Arabic, using Abadi's cover name and showing the guard the GSD ID card that identified him as Fawzi al-Diyala. A bead of sweat trickled down his back. If al-Hafez had alerted Abadi, they would let him in and it would go bad very fast. The guard glanced at the card, then at his face, and nodded to the other guard.

“Ahlan wa sahlan,”
he said, pressing a button to open the gate and gesturing for him to drive in.

He drove around a circular driveway, a marble fountain splashing water in the middle of a lawn, and parked in front of the villa, bathed in white light from outside floodlights. As he got out of the Renault, he spotted a guard with a German shepherd patrolling beyond the floodlit area, and surveillance cameras on the side and roof of the villa. He walked up to the entrance, and three armed men appeared and asked him to take off his suit jacket. They checked the jacket and frisked him thoroughly, taking pistol from the holster at the small of his back. It was a Russian SR-1 Gyurza, standard issue for the Russian FSB and former allies like the Syrian GSD, which he had bought that afternoon in Saida Zaynab. When they were done, one of the guards took him inside and asked him to wait.

The foyer was marble and sleek, an interior designer's dream. After a moment the double door to a living room opened and a paunchy middle-aged man with a goatee and wearing glasses came out. In the gap of the door just before Dr. Abadi closed it behind him, Scorpion caught a glimpse of a well-dressed woman and a young girl watching a big screen TV. He was glad he hadn't come in shooting.

“Min fadlak,
this way,” Dr. Abadi said. He led Scorpion into a small office, the walls covered with books. The guard who had taken his gun waited outside the door. “Would you like some juice? Turkish coffee?” the doctor asked, sliding a folder on the desk into a drawer.

Scorpion looked at the books on the walls. They were on medicine, mostly infectious diseases, anthropology, and Islamic studies.

“You come from Najah al-Hafez?” Scorpion didn't answer. “So what does the Idarat al-Amn al-'Amm want at this hour?”

“Where's the Palestinian?” Scorpion said.

“There are millions of Palestinians under brutal Israeli occupation in the West Bank and Gaza,” Dr. Abadi replied.

“Just the one,” Scorpion said.

“Why is this of interest?”

“You know why! Do you take us for idiots? We're having to deal with the Egyptian Mukhabarat now!” Scorpion shouted, standing up. Behind him, he heard the door open and the guard come rushing in. Dr. Abadi held up his hand to stop the man from attacking Scorpion. “You live here because we allow you to live here!” Scorpion continued.

“Because it is in your interest for me to be here,” Dr. Abadi said, signaling the guard to leave.

“Maybe after Cairo, it is not so much in our interest anymore,” Scorpion said, and sat down. “Where's the Palestinian?”

“Not in Syria. Or Lebanon.”

“And therefore none of our business? Hardly. Tell me about him.”

“The Palestinians are a people oppressed. There is nothing else to know.”

“Trained in Iran?”

“Palestinians are not the only ones trained in Iran,” Dr. Abadi said, his meaning obvious. Syrian GSD and Mukhabarat officers often collaborated and trained with the Iranians. “Nor is Iran the only country sympathetic to the Resistance.”

“Is he in Europe?”

“What do you care? The Palestinian is an operative. Policy is decided here,” Dr. Abadi said, tapping his own chest. Just then his cell phone rang.

“As-salaam aleikum,”
he said into the phone, then listened. He looked at Scorpion and said nothing. Scorpion began to get a bad feeling. He was about to move when Dr. Abadi pulled a gun from beneath the desk and pointed it at him. “Ahmed!” he called out, and the guard outside the door rushed in, saw what was happening, pointed his gun at Scorpion and shouted to the two other guards.

“Who are you?” Dr. Abadi demanded.

“You know who I am. Fawzi al-Diyala of the GSD. Director Najah al-Hafez sent me, as you were told,” Scorpion snapped.

Dr. Abadi shook his head. “One of my men is with al-Diyala at his apartment this minute. It seems he doesn't feel too well. Someone slipped a drug into his juice today. Are you a Jew? Mossad? BND? Who are you?” he asked.

“What do you care? Policy is decided elsewhere,” Scorpion said, his mind racing. Someone, not al-Hafez, had tipped Abadi off. An Islamic Resistance agent inside the GSD. Of course Abadi had suspected Mossad, but of all the intelligence services in the world, why had he mentioned the German BND? Did that mean the Palestinian was in Germany? Wherever he was, Scorpion realized, it didn't look like the information was going to do him much good.

“Stupid. Whoever you are, even your jokes are stupid. Get rid of him,” Dr. Abadi said, pointing the gun with a two-handed stance at Scorpion. One of the guards pressed the muzzle of his gun against Scorpion's head as a second guard started to tie his wrists with a plastic zip-tie. Once his hands were tied, they'd relax, figuring they had him, he thought, waiting till two of the guards pulled him roughly to his feet.

As they started to shove him out, he did a Brazilian back leg sweep, taking down the guard to his right, then turning close into the guard behind him, he butted him under the chin while grabbing the single-edge razor blade hidden in his hair, a trick Houdini had used in his famous paper bag escape, and used it to cut the plastic zip-tie. Then he pulled the guard he had butted into a low choke hold below the level of the desk, so Abadi couldn't see to shoot, and slashed his carotid artery with the razor.

The first guard Scorpion had taken down now aimed his gun at him. He used a Krav Maga move, blocking with the hand, stepping out of the line of fire, twisting the guard's wrist and taking the gun away, all in less than two seconds. He whirled and shot the third guard in the face, and then, still on his knees, fired through the desk, hitting Abadi in the stomach. Scorpion rolled away as Abadi fired into the desk, missing him. As the first guard started to pick up the gun, he shot him in the head.

He stood up then, as Dr. Abadi, pressing his forearm against his bleeding stomach, aimed his gun. Scorpion fired, the bullet going through Abadi's hand into his stomach. Abadi cried out as he fired, his shot going wide. Scorpion fired again at his chest, killing him.

The alarm was going off, and somewhere a woman was screaming. He only had seconds. Fortunately, Dr. Abadi had left his laptop computer on. Scorpion took out a special flash drive designed by the NSA and plugged it into the laptop's USB port. The drive's software took over the operating system with admin privileges. It grabbed Abadi's e-mail files, gathering his account properties—the names and IP addresses of his incoming POP3 and outgoing SMTP mail servers and all of the document and Internet files on the hard drive—and downloaded them onto the flash drive. When it was finished, Scorpion pulled the flash drive out of the port and took it, along with two guns, including the SR-1 Gyurza.